The Game
by Kalisona
Summary: Sometimes, the person you should fear the most is the person you could imagine looking back at you in the mirror. Meeting someone who could match him step-by-step was almost surreal; Tony Stark was used to always being three steps ahead of everyone else.
1. Chapter 1

**Title:** The Game

**Characters/Pairings: **Tony, Loki, the whole Team Stark crew eventually, and some familiar friends in passing. Hints of Tony/Pepper and it could be taken as a Frostiron prequel of sorts, but there's not a major focus on pairings. Still, I suppose there's a Frostiron tint to it.

**Rating: **Somewhere in the PG-13 area. Hopefully.

**Warnings: **Violence to come, games of cat and mouse and a good deal of insanity.

**Summary:** Sometimes, the greatest enemy you've got is the one you can imagine seeing the next morning in the mirror. Filling up a prompt—Tony Stark and Loki as Sherlock Holmes and Moriarty archetypes. I diverted from the prompt a little, but only in attempting to make this fit as seamlessly into movie canon as possible. Theoretically, it won't come off as an AU. You guys will have to let me know how I do at the end of things.

**Dedication:** Here's to Defenestration-and-more at Tumblr for the glorious prompt and equally glorious Frostiron fics, and, of course, to my dearest, for acting as beta and making sure I don't _completely_ screw up Tony Stark. I might as well cross-post this all over the place, I suppose; I am rather fond of feedback.

**Disclaimer: **All characters belong to Marvel; unfortunately, even the idea of Sherlockian archetypes is not mine. I'm just here to play.

_It may be wrong, but here in this memoir that will never see the light of day, I must confess that I am glad that slimy man is gone. That's a terrible thing to say, a terrible, dark thing, but when I think of finding Tony there on the sand, staring up at the sky with that blank look on his face, I know it can't be anything but true._

_It was like Afghanistan all over again. That sense that he saw things that I couldn't touch, even if I wanted nothing more than to be there for him. It's not that he pushed me away. It's just that he'll never tell me exactly what happened. Not all of it._

_Hasn't he been through enough?_

_It seems like every time he triumphs over something, there's something else trying to knock him down. But I can only do what I can. I'm not helpless, and Tony lets me help him more than anyone knows. More than he would want anyone to know._

_Ha. It's a good thing I'm never getting this published._

_But even with how much he confides in me, there are some things that he will never share. I know this. There are some things that he cares about me too __much__ to share with me. I know that too. Sometimes I wish he would think more about himself than me. Or well. More about his well-being. He already thinks about himself plenty, thank you very much._

_Anyway, what I'm trying to say is that that means that the story I'm putting down here won't be entirely accurate. I can only put down what I've researched and uncovered, and what Tony's told me, of course. I wasn't there to witness everything, despite my best efforts. But I think it's the closest thing to the full story that exists._

_Even if nobody will read it, I feel better for the fact that it's here. Even if _I'll_never read it again, it's better that it exists here. I don't think it's a story that should ever be forgotten._

_It's a story of a man who matched Tony's genius step for step._

_But I'm starting my story in the middle of things, and that's just sloppy storytelling. God knows I've scoffed at enough reporters for it; I should take my own advice to avoid being too hypocritical. I have plenty of my own vices. Hypocrisy isn't going to be added to the list._

_From the beginning, then._

— Virginia "Pepper" Potts

—-

Tony Stark, billionaire playboy philanthropist, metaphorically ducked an unfortunately _very_ real henpecking. He was distracted by the schematics on the screen, the very beginnings of the self-sustaining energy he'd stated he was going to dabble in instead of weapons, that _Stark Industries_ would produce instead of killing devices.

So far, he was making good on that promise. He hadn't touched a weapon in months, not the schematics, not the pieces, and certainly not the finished product. He rather thought the world should have been proud of him.

No weapons, only sustainable energy (which he was gratified in a way to find involved just as many accidental explosions as weapons building at times). It was a fascinating enough task, at least, one that could and did draw all of his rather formidable genius to solve. But solving it he was. He had the pieces, the plans, the know-how. It was just a matter of _solving_.

No weapons.

(Except for the Mark VII model of his suit, but the Iron Man suit wasn't a weapon, his suit was _him_, and it was still in its early stages regardless, though he had high hopes for this one.)

They should've been proud of him.

"Are you listening to me?"

Pepper didn't sound proud of him.

Tony finally looked up from his screens, blinking as if coming back to himself after wherever his thoughts had led him. Down paths of numbers and formulae, ideas both ridiculous and comprehensive that he would make_work_—

Right. Pepper.

Pepper just seemed relieved to have his attention on her, finally.

"I need to go over a few things with you," Pepper said. Judging by the huffy tone and the way her hands were planted on her hips, it wasn't the first time either.

But he was so close to a breakthrough. If he just tweaked the number of kJ produced in the first stage—

"_Tony_."

"'M busy," he muttered, turning his eyes back to his screens—

Only for Pepper to step in between him and the screens, hands on her hips. She took a very deliberate, deep breath, slowly getting her admittedly formidable temper under control, so when she next spoke, her voice was flat.

"When did you last eat?"

Tony made a face, but she was still in the way of his key formulae.

"…Recently."

"Within the past 24 hours 'recently'?" Pepper asked—far too shrewdly, Tony thought. So he didn't deign to give this one an answer.

Pepper, unfortunately, knew him well enough to know that meant she was absolutely correct.

"Honestly, Tony, I'm not going to write your obituary if you die by _forgetting to eat_." A huff and she stepped away from the screen.

Tony was distracted enough by this new topic of conversation that he followed her, formulae not forgotten but temporarily set aside.

"How embarrassing would that be?" Pepper continued, striding towards the door to Tony's workshop.

Tony followed, because—"You'd write my obituary otherwise?"

She scoffed, but managed to successfully lead him up the stairs. And when they were in a more properly livable room (instead of covered in technology and forgotten coffee cups), she turned to tell him, "No. So don't die—" if her voice wavered at that, because she still remembered Obadiah, she_remembered_ and it'd only been a few months since—she quickly continued with a better sense of humor, "because you're not getting one from me."

Tony offered a faintly pained grin, almost more of a grimace, really, as if he knew the path her thoughts had taken. And his response was what first came to mind, as per usual with him. "What about my biography?"

She gave him an incredulous look for his troubles. "Who says you need a biography?"

"Who _wouldn't_? It'd be a bestseller, top of the charts. Who wouldn't want to read about, well, me?" He gave her his most charming look, spreading his hands imploringly, which Pepper blew off with that special Pepper skill.

"Eat dinner."

Tony arched an eyebrow at that, but before he could speak again, she continued, "You hardly need anything else that could inflate your ego."

As she spoke, Pepper began to walk, clearly intending to go get some _actual_work done, but Tony acted quickly, stepping forward to slip his arm around her waist, depending as always on that reckless charm of his.

"_The Man Behind the Iron Man_ by Virginia Potts." He tilted his head as if he could see it already.

She wrinkled her nose. "That's awful."

Tony had never pretended to be a writer (he was a scientist, he didn't really dabble in the arts), so he was effectively unbothered by the criticism. "That's why you'll be writing it."

Pepper looked at him for a long moment. And then her lips twitched, barely suppressing a smile. "Well…" she said slowly, meeting his eyes. "I suppose I'm the only one who could write a full, unbiased, entirely accurate account."

Tony's face went through some interesting expressions, from glee at her acceptance to a rather strangled look at "full" and "unbiased" and "entirely accurate".

"On second thought—"

"Virginia Potts, biographer," Pepper spoke over him, musingly. "I like the sound of that."

Tony could see a battle lost before the fight even began, and while he wasn't one to give up on a good fight, this was _Pepper_. Pepper always won. It was maybe her superpower, which he thought was starkly unfair.

She just offered him that particular smile of hers that was one of the things that let her always win and pulled out of his grasp. "Anyway, as I said, you should go eat dinner. I have _actual_ work to do."

"_Actual_ work?" Tony looked at her incredulously. "And what am _I_ doing?"

"Playing with new toys." She grinned at him, patting his arm. "If I come back and you haven't eaten anything, I'm putting that you're a manchild into your biography."

Tony stared after her as she sauntered out, and muttered under his breath a little.

"_Shall I order dinner, sir?_" JARVIS interrupted his mutterings, and Tony threw a glance at the ceiling for appearances' sake.

"Where were you to defend me against that defamation of character?" he asked.

"_What defamation of character, sir?_" came the response from the AI, and Tony made a face. It was in good humor, though, that he exclaimed, "Betrayed by my own creation!"

He supposed dinner couldn't hurt, so he did order JARVIS to order something in (something Italian and pasta-y, to which JARVIS had asked if he should add 'pasta-y' to his dictionary) and sat heavily on the couch.

He supposed it couldn't hurt to eat a little something before returning to work. Now that his concentration had been broken, anyway.

And then Tony's brow furrowed.

There was a newspaper on his coffee table.

Paper didn't tend to last long anywhere Tony Stark worked; he found it outdated and slow, preferring tablets and keyboards any day. So a newspaper was a rare sight, and he reached over to pick it up despite himself, curious. The date was, peculiarly, from the month before, so he had no idea where it had come from. He would have noticed it before, surely. Maybe Pepper had brought it with her and had forgotten it there? An outdated newspaper, right, that seemed likely. Or maybe she left it there to try to remind Tony to keep up with the outside world, instead of his own little world.

He had no idea; Pepper was a hard woman to read sometimes.

Just as he was musing on how much easier it would be to just flick on the television and get his news _that_ way, his eye was caught by a picture on the third page, even as he flipped through. Tony paused, opening the newspaper properly, and looking closer.

The article seemed to be about a new professor at Stanford—"Youngest professor to join the Institute for Computational and Mathematical Engineering faculty" blah blah blah. Now that he glanced at it, it wasn't that interesting after all. But it was the picture that had first caught his eye, and it was the picture he studied now.

The man _did_ look young; he didn't look like he could've been more 30, at a generous estimate. The picture had caught his profile, but it still outlined narrow features and a youthful face.

Tony made a face at his clothing—a scarf and a suit ensemble? _Please_—before tossing the newspaper aside. It'd just been a passing thing to catch his interest; with a brain like his, it happened all the time.

So he ignored it, pushing the picture, the headline—_Genius Mathematicians Come in All Ages_, pah, cheesy—to the back of his mind. It wasn't the first time (well, it _was_, that was the point of the article), but it wasn't the first time someone had done something "unusual" or "outstanding". If he'd thought some hoity toity mathematician could challenge him, perhaps he'd paid it some mind.

But he didn't.

Nor did he pay any mind to the man's name as he let the newspaper settle on the couch beside him, still open to that peculiar picture, except that it sounded distinctly French.

In fact, he'd forgotten completely by the time Pepper stalked back into his workshop a few hours later with a container of cold pasta in one hand that he had also forgotten about entirely.

—

On occasion, Tony spared a thought for the Avengers Initiative. After all, he'd very nearly been a part of it—but he'd also been alerted when it'd been scrapped like a bad piece of metal, too weak to be used. It looked strong on the outside, but a single hit in the right place would cause it to snap.

Metalworking was the closest Tony got to art.

Tony was a man of science, of numbers and facts and formulae, but it had been stated again and again that his Iron Man suit was a work of art—enough so that they'd want the suit, but not him.

Which was ridiculous. The suit _was_ him.

The thoughts he spared for said initiative were generally a little bit bitter (not that anyone could blame him, truly; he'd basically been told he wasn't good enough for the team, right?), but also a little curious. Because if there was one thing Tony was good at, it was thinking big, impossible things.

A group of Earth's mightiest heroes was a big, impossible thing. That was probably why it had been scrapped, but he didn't like the idea of a daring idea going to waste. And that was probably why he kept tabs on the Avengers Initiative.

It wasn't as though he went out of his _way_ for the information, but he couldn't deny that if it was there, he would take a look at it. The justification worked for him—even though a good portion of him knew that there was very little information that wasn't already at his fingertips.

But the justification was enough, and so he pushed aside his work on energy cells for the moment.

"JARVIS, what has our angry, green friend been up to?" he asked musingly, reclining in his chair and toying absently with a screwdriver. He wasn't sure why there had been a screwdriver on his desk, but it'd probably been there for a reason that he would recall in an hour or two.

"_Sir, it appears as though he was invited to a convention on gamma radiation in France_," came the prompt response. Tony rather loved having the world at his fingertips at times.

But that interested him. "Ah—"

"_He declined_," JARVIS continued, as if to stomp out any of Tony's interest immediately.

"Oh."

That was boring. He supposed, in a way, he understood. Couldn't control it, didn't want to hurt people, etcetera, etcetera. But it was a personal affront to all of his sensibilities, how a man could sit in some remote corner of the world when he had more to offer than that.

Or maybe he was just waiting for something interesting to happen for the Avengers, and Bruce Banner was someone he was depending on to turn out very interesting indeed.

"What about the others?" he finally asked, flicking his screens to life before him, screensavers dissolving into diagrams. He could get _some_ work done while he waited for the gossip, because that was really all it was. Gossip.

Superhero gossip. But gossip all the same.

"_Steve Rogers remains where he was the last time you decided you wished to spy on him._" If an AI could sound reproachful, JARVIS managed it.

Tony just made a face at the room—he didn't feel the need to look up like so many of his visitors, as JARVIS was simply a presence that was always around.

"No comments from the peanut gallery. If I want cheesy remarks and a sense of guilt I'd watch daytime television."

"_Of course, sir_," JARVIS responded smoothly, and Tony rolled his eyes skyward briefly.

It was easier to banter with his AI than to allow his attention to be snagged by the great, almighty Captain America, who was doing little more than skulking about his room. Ladies and gentlemen, the great man his father always wished he'd been.

Tony scoffed, but before he could dwell further, JARVIS, dependable as always, had continued with a distraction.

"_Clint Barton, codename Hawkeye, appears to be scheduled to appear at a convention here in California._"

…That was curious. Not that he had information on Hawkeye; hacking into SHIELD had always been laughably easy. It'd only be a matter of time before he got caught, of course, but for now he intended to make good use of it. If gossip counted as good use, anyway. He thought it did, and that was really the only opinion that mattered.

Tony tilted his head. "What sort of convention?"

"_It appears to deal with dimensional geometry, sir_."

Barton appearing at a meeting for math nerds. Now that was strange.

"And I wasn't invited?" Tony finally responded, barely seeing the diagrams before him.

"_Would you have gone if you had been, sir?_" JARVIS' voice almost sounded reproachful again, and Tony sighed. Guilt-tripped by his AI. This was what his life had become. Not that he sounded at all regretful when he did respond.

"Probably not. It sounded boring. But now it sounds a lot more interesting. JARVIS, I want the location and the time for the cube con."

It was probably nothing, but it wasn't like Tony to not make use of interesting information. At the very least, it'd be a bit of excitement. He'd been far too good, just working on the self-sustainable energy—

He cleared his throat. "And the rest?"

JARVIS didn't know where Natasha was, same as the week before. That wasn't that surprising either; keeping tabs on a master spy was apparently harder than it sounded, especially when said spy was the Black Widow.

Thor was…well. He only had the vaguest of information on him, even within SHIELD's files, but apparently Thor was not around.

Putting it lightly.

Which left only Iron Man.

Tony drummed his fingers on his desk absently. An interesting little diversion, but in the end, that's all it was. His work was more interesting than the so-called superheroes were, and—well, that wasn't really sad, since he tended to focus on the work that _was_ interesting, but still.

"Superheroes, JARVIS," he muttered sardonically, changing a few numbers where they clearly stuck out as wrong. "Who needs them."

He was hardly a hero, and he did alright, after all—

And Tony completely missed JARVIS' response, brow furrowing as he leaned forward to peer more closely at the screen.

"Hang on…" No, something was off here, and if there was anything Tony was always aware of, it was his own systems. With a frown and a quick shortcut, he pulled up the base coding of the programs he was currently working on. Something, something, something—

If someone was hacking into Stark Industry tech, into his _own_ tech, he'd be having words with them. _After_ he shut them down.

He didn't really bother to think of the hypocrisy in that, considering what he'd just been doing. Dwelling wasn't really his style anyway.

And so he scanned the technology with a surprising amount of patience (or maybe not so surprising, to those who really understood how he worked), bit by bit, line by line. And after a few delicate minutes, Tony stopped and his expression was just a little bit too vicious.

"Gotcha, you little—"

His expression narrowed a little as his lips pursed. "JARVIS, track the location of this. I need to know where this is coming from."

Whoever it was, it was a talented hacker, that much couldn't be denied. To be able to hack into _his_ tech took a great deal of skill, and Tony was far from thrilled that it had happened in the first place. He studied the job more intently as JARVIS began the tracing.

He'd probably isolated the issue before any major information had been accessed, but it wasn't like he kept any _really_ important files where they could be so easily accessed anyway. Still, there _was_ information on these servers, and Tony took challenges like this very seriously.

And it _was_ a challenge, of that he was sure.

Because there was a certain delicateness about it, he thought. It might have been a strange thought to anyone else, but to Tony Stark, who understood technology like very few people could, it meant a great deal. It was a lot like a technological fingerprint. This was a very distinctive job, which perhaps meant he would be able to use that to track whoever had done this down—

"_Tracking failed."_

Tony blinked, looking up for a moment. "…That's impossible. The signature is right there."

"_The fact remains that it leads to no computer, sir._"

Well then. Tony leaned back in his chair for a brief moment, _thinking_. If it had happened, then it couldn't be impossible. Which meant that something else had to be the case, however improbable it seemed. Thus resolved, he snapped his fingers as he sat up.

He hadn't been planning on sleeping that night anyway.

"JARVIS, we've got work to do."

—

When Loki arrived on Midgard, it was entirely of his own volition.

He was not one to dive into a conflict without a shred of information, however; no, Loki was not his would-be, pathetic brother, Thor, presuming that diving in and swinging what was nothing more than a piece of enchanted metal on a stick would get him anywhere.

No, he was not Thor.

And so he observed.

And he observed one thing in particular. Humans enjoyed patterns. They broke down what was hardly categorical at all and then they categorized it. It was quaint, in an entertaining way. It also made them all the easier to manipulate.

So long as he fit into one of those categories (or multiple, it mattered not to him), he would be overlooked. He would be categorized and left as well enough. It was if he was not able to be categorized that he would catch attention, which was interesting and noteworthy for when he wanted to catch attention, but not yet, not yet, he had plans yet to lay.

So he took himself apart and reassembled himself by categories—young, attractive, yes well, he could not be blamed for being vain. Clever—that one was required for what he had planned, though again, he would prefer to not be taken as stupid. _Human_—and this was the most entertaining, for what should have been tricky indeed was a simple matter.

In order to be categorized as human, Loki merely needed to act as one.

And how simple was it, to infiltrate an entire society as if he was one of them! How simple to forge an identity for himself, to gain himself entrance to the most prestigious of human resources, to build a career, to create a new_name_.

Like all self-aware gods, Loki was more than conscious of the associations with his name. A name was a powerful thing, and he was not so eager to cast off the many meanings that had been tied to it. The beauty of crafting his own identity, he mused, was that he was given the opportunity to make it absolutely flawless.

Loki. Loptr.

While he was most often associated with fire (and recently, bitterly, with _ice_), he had always been fonder of the association with air. Air was whimsical but also less malleable than fire; he enjoyed the association with something that could truly not be tamed.

'Air' it was, then. _Lopt_. Or, in another language, _éventer_. If nothing else, the wordplay amused him well enough.

That was the thing about false identities. One could craft them to be perfect. Certainly much better than false identities cast upon a helpless child, one who could not have known any better…

Regardless, it was all too simple for him to build his identity. Why, one could argue that it was hardly a lie if he was simply shifting his identity ever so slightly, couldn't one?

Luke Eventer, mathematician, professor, harmless but talented.

With such a thing set, he could continue.

Loki was excellent at observation, and he was excellent at plotting. Selvig was a loose thread that begged to be quietly unwound—so he did. Of course the clever astrophysicist would inspect the Tesseract. Of course.

This was worth taking a look.

There were so many things worth taking a look, taking apart until there was nothing left to be unknown.

Slowly, of course; it would not do to be too quickly known in this game.

And it should not have been doubted that Loki was playing a _game_. Not even when he smirked at the camera, head angled just so, and accepted congratulations for his new, remarkable position as a math professor at such a prestigious university.

_Especially_ not then.

—

Whoever was hacking into his systems was good, that was for sure.

The thing was, Tony was so much better. JARVIS' trace might have failed, but _Tony_ was the one to program JARVIS, all of his quirks and charm, all the product of a brilliant mind and a number of late nights (if it could be called a late night when one never slept at all).

There was very little JARVIS could not do, not after so much work, and so much effort, until the machine could literally think for itself—but what JARVIS could not do, often times Tony _could_.

He could now, the systems of his computer spread before him, laid naked before his eyes to pick through at his leisure. He'd long ago pinned down the hacker—now it was a matter of following to the source. And as he'd proven with the Avengers Initiative, there was no information that he could not access, not when he reached for it with clever, creating fingers.

The expression on his face was less a grin than a triumphant baring of his teeth.

Honestly, trying to hack into Stark Industries. That was just egocentrism courting recklessness.

If that description sounded familiar to Tony, he ignored it. He had direction now.

He'd gotten crazy places with far less than that.

And it was time to be just a little bit crazy.


	2. Chapter 2

**A/N:** Well this took me longer than expected-but instead of rambling on about that, thanks for all of the lovely encouragement, and onwards we go! c:

* * *

Loki had not been on Earth long before he realized just how simple the task truly was. He was careful, but that did not mean he had to avoid the spotlight. _Au contrair_, Luke Eventer thought. He could hide himself in audacity. It wasn't as though the mortals even knew he _existed_, and that was the catch for the petty, blind cretins. They did not know yet that he existed, and they did not know yet to fear him. And oh, that would change—

But not yet.

He would make a name for himself because it suited his plans, because it would grant him access, and most of all, _because he wanted to_.

It had been far too long since he was entirely free to do as he wished, not under the pinning gazes of the Chitauri. They watched him, of course, in a way. They waited, impatiently.

But Loki understood the value of intelligence, both his own and that of information.

They would wait.

And he would play in the time given him.

So Loki applied himself. Social sciences he found quaint and impractical; the arts not only did not interest him, they would not help him. Science, however, science reminded him of his magic—cold, hard formulae and processes. Of course, his magic was far beyond the comprehension of any Midgardian, but it made grasping mathematics laughably easy.

Loki had always had a mind sharper even than both his knives and his tongue; he applied it now and in the course of a week, he had devoured enough mathematics to satisfy his forged identity.

For there was a certain scientific "discovery" that had attracted his attention—and the attention of those who would soon be following his every move very, very closely.

He did not believe certain important pieces would ever be shown to the public…but there was no doubting the fact that this discussion on ochtachorons could not have been unrelated.

And so Loki would make sure that he was in the proper position to appreciate this discussion, and all it brought. Most definitely all _who_ it brought. He was aware of much more than any would give him credit for. It was time to make use of that.

This he pondered as he walked down dark streets, dressed sharply in a suit, hardly bothering to note just how late it'd gotten. There was nothing on Midgard that could threaten him, nothing that could even come close to the horrors he had already seen and experienced.

Though he supposed his appearance didn't truly give off that impression. It was then that he was introduced to the darker side of humanity.

His shoes, dark as the rest of his clothing, made little noise on the sidewalk. Loki had found this city was rarely ever _quiet_, but it was late enough that the shadowy sidewalks were empty.

Or nearly so.

The sound of footsteps behind him alerted Loki that he was not alone. The staccato of feet moving in time with his no matter his pace alerted him that he was being followed. Loki only had to ponder this briefly before he quite suddenly ducked into he space between two buildings, hardly an alleyway. It was convenient, the asymmetry of human-built things; such a thing would never exist upon Asgard. But Loki had perfected the art of moving without being seen on _Asgard_, and so it was no hardship to do so on Midgard.

If he had wished to.

But he did not.

They saw him. They fancied him scared; he could hear it in the eagerness of their quicker steps.

Of all things, Loki Liesmith was not a coward. He stopped abruptly, now shadowed by the buildings that acted as a shelter, if a whimsy one, and then he turned. There were only two of them, an insulting raiding party to be sure, and the unimpressed arch of Loki's eyebrow showed just what he thought of this mortal scum.

One of the men read it well-enough, not that Loki was truly attempting to hide his contempt—his expression shifted rapidly to anger as he lunged, fist raised.

Loki was aware of his appearance, particularly here, where all of his wide arrange of abilities was masked by the mortals' own lack of perception. He was tall, yes, but thin. In his rather tidy suit, he supposed he did look to be a perfect target.

It suited him perfectly in this. It had been some time since anyone had attacked him outright without a hint of wariness.

It made him grin, all bared teeth and viciousness.

And then he moved, side-stepping, tsk-ing absently, and he kicked the man's legs out from under him in the same fluid motion. There was only a startled noise as he crashed face-first into the ground, but Loki merely straightened and faced the other just as his frantic scramblings managed to put a knife in his hand. He waved it in what he likely considered a threatening motion, but Loki was almost offended. These _children_ could hardly aspire to match his skills with knives, and yet they _dared_—

Loki slid forward, smooth as glass with all of the sharp edges. He was not as proficient as his brother in close combat, it was true, even less so Tyr the ever-so-mighty. He had heard his share of comments to that effect, and they had had the opposite effect of that intended.

Loki learned to use what talents he did have, and to very vicious use. Honor was of no use to him. "Fighting fair" had even less a use than honor.

And Loki was still—had been—and Asgardian.

It was truly no contest.

The man staggered back to try to put distance between him and the man who suddenly, with that grin splitting his face, looked much less sane, but Loki kept coming, long-legged strides bringing him more than close enough to ram his elbow in the man's face, helping him down to his knees with an effortless follow-up blow to the back of his head.

He restrained himself, and he rather thought the mortal ought to be grateful. His full strength could have done much worse.

Loki allowed the mortal time to recover as he bent to scoop up the knife, testing its balance idly.

"W-who are you?" the man asked, rather heartwrenchingly predictable, Loki mused, even as blood dripped down his face.

Predictability was a bane in any situation. It was something that made his grin flatten into something less amused.

He tested the knife on his finger—dull.

Predictable.

He should skin these mortals for even daring to attack him, for even daring to believe themselves able to defeat him. It was his right, as Loki Liesmith, cast-out Prince of Asgard, God of Fire and Mischief alike.

The balance of the knife was off, Loki thought, and he so he compensated expertly, half-turning and sending the knife sailing with a practiced flick of his wrist.

It pinned the other man's hand to the wall which he had been using as aid to subtly stand—or had been attempting to. The man howled at that, but froze, and a satisfied smirk curved Loki's lips once again.

These men were a piece of the mortal's criminal underworld, though Loki found the title a distasteful misnomer. Loki had seen the great halls of Helheim, and nothing the mortals could ever create would reach that grandness that was the true underworld. There was something entertaining about their aspirations, it was true, but he still found such a thing bitter on his tongue.

But though an ineloquently erroneous metaphor, such a construct was not useless.

It would have been well within his rights for Loki to slaughter these pitiful creatures, both kneeling before him now, staring at him with wide eyes. Loki cast his eyes over them appraisingly, smirk cruel and cold, and his tone was as smooth and cold as the ice that had made him so despised.

"I am of a mind to be gracious," Loki said, spreading his arms to show his good will.

He admired the hope written all over their faces. So beautifully unaware. It was as if they were _begging_ for subjugation, for safety now that they had had a taste of danger.

He straightened his suit easily, immaculate. Though frightened, they were not terrified out of their wits. Perhaps this would be worth his while indeed.

"My name," he said smoothly, "is Luke Eventer. I have a task for you."

Yes, the looks on their faces was rather heartening—they would make for excellent pawns.

Loki had once admired a spider as a child, for the entirety of an afternoon, holed up inside instead of romping about with Thor and his admiring "friends". The spider had woven its web, home and deadly trap alike, with effortless grace, and each bit of prey caught was clueless until it was much too late. Even when Thor had burst into the room, running straight through the web and destroying its entirety with his energy, the spider had survived, beginning her work once again.

It was quite the impressive task, to avoid death so easily, no matter which threads were severed, so long as one was well-prepared enough.

And with this—

One more thread created.

Loki's smirk was razor-sharp, for laid out before him was any number of paths, all so very inviting. Opportunity lay before him, behind him, around him—

Let the game begin.

* * *

Pepper could input the access code to Tony's lab without looking, and indeed she did, eyes trained on her very state of the art "phone-slash-PDF-slash-whatever the hell you need it to be", as Tony called it sometimes, when he didn't need to breathe. As CEO, she was undeniably busy (sometimes, she thought her _schedule_ had schedules), but she was Pepper Potts.

Regardless of how busy she got, she always had time to check on Tony.

She looked up from her phone in time to duck what appeared to be a screwdriver.

Ah.

Thankfully, she was rather used to such things; Tony's workshop was hardly a safe place at any time of day, but most especially when he had been working on something for days.

Like now, for instance.

The screwdriver hit the wall and bounced off mildly, hitting the ground and rolling a few inches further. She noted it absently but left it there; it wasn't her job to pick up Tony's minor messes, just his major ones.

Technically, it wasn't her job even to do that anymore, but she'd never really dream of not picking up the pieces Tony left behind. He broke things often, and he didn't fix them. He fixed _other_ things, built new things—

Tony Stark was a genius, but he needed Pepper, and she knew it. She'd have known it even if he hadn't told her so—

(She still felt guilty, sometimes, when she dwelled, which as ridiculous considering if Tony had just _told her sooner_-)

But it seemed to be her role to feel guilty. She had to make up for Tony's lack of a conscience sometimes, right?

So she left the screwdriver where it was because she was definitely no longer Tony's nanny and instead she was his biographer now or something along those lines, and so Pepper Potts strolled over to where he peered very intently at a computer screen or three (so where did the screwdriver come from?).

"Tony," she said simply, looking around suspiciously.

She'd thought maybe an explosion would've chucked the tool at the wall (and her), but it looked as though everything was far too intact—

Except for a rather guilty looking robot hand, drooping under her stare.

…Pepper pinched the bridge of her nose, leaving that mystery to be solved for another day (she could imagine it now—"Tony, why did you build a robot that throws around your tools?"

And he would respond with something half-hearted like "I know, it's genius" while he worked on something else.

Oh god, even in her subconscious Tony Stark ignored her too often for comfort.).

"_Tony_," she said again, and this time Tony heard her, looking up from the screen and blinking at her and it was always as if he was resurfacing from a dream, the way he looked at her when she interrupted his train of thought. Sometimes she wondered what it was he _thought_ of when he was there, wherever he went when he created those fantastic and marvelous inventions of his.

Most of the time, she didn't want to know, because she got to see the harried and haggard looks that came after he'd created and created and was left only with the exhaustion.

Pepper was a sensible woman. She had her hands full with taking care of a genius; there was no need to desire to be a genius herself. Still, something possessed her this time, now that she had Tony's attention, to lean over, curious.

"What are you working on now?"

The 'that doesn't look like your work on clean energy' went unsaid. Attempting to micromanage Tony's work and inventing would be buying oneself a one way trip to insanity.

Not hearing any censorship in her voice, Tony offered up some information, fingers tapping on the desk. "There's something that came up last night. I'm trying to figure it out, diagnose it."

Trace it. Discover it.

Pepper was eyeing him oddly, the look on her face akin to a faint puzzled curiosity.

"What about the screwdriver?" she asked, as if out of the blue.

Tony blinked, for once honestly baffled. "What screwdriver—"

But Pepper just nodded decisively, as if something had been confirmed for her, and glanced at her organized tablet and continued.

"And the board meeting you've got in two hours? What about that?"

Oh, that was the Work Tone. That was the tone that said that this was not to be messed with, not to be dismissed, not to be ignored.

So, of course, Tony had to disappoint.

"Yeah…about that—"

Tony was quick to continue, seeing Pepper open her mouth in what had to be outrage. "I have a math convention to attend. Very hip, very…square. That was awful, ignore that. Anyway, cubes are huge these days, you know. Very important in the clean energy business."

And it was nonsense, but Tony's mind cast back to that notebook of his father's regardless, and cubes, cubes, cubes, his father had mentioned a cube somewhere in there, _{ (x__1__, x__2__, x__3__, x__4__) __∈ ℝ__4__: -1 ≤ x__i__ ≤ 1 }_—

Pepper was staring at him with a vaguely reproachful expression, and somehow, he felt bad for messing up her carefully laid plans. It really, really wasn't fair how she could make him feel bad for minor little things, like not eating for instance.

Or like messing up her schedule.

So he stepped forward, resting his hands gently on her shoulders, and looked her in the eye. He had no idea what the hell their relationship was right now if he was quite frank with himself—

But what he did know was that he could always trust Pepper.

And this, this was important.

"Someone tried to hack into my personal server last night," Tony said simply, watching her gaze shift from surprise to some protectiveness and concern, watched the questions form on the tip of her tongue even as she waited for him to continue.

Good old Pepper. She was so reliable it was almost unreal—and he was so glad she was real.

"I stopped them before they got anywhere, of course. But…they were good, Pep." He shrugged, as if in explanation.

If there was one thing Tony couldn't be contested on, it was his own creations. If he said someone was good after trying something like that, that meant they were a _threat_.

Minor, of course. They simply couldn't compete with Tony himself.

But a threat nonetheless, and underestimated threats had a habit of coming back to bite them both in the ass.

"What does this math convention have to do with it?" Pepper asked, reproach fading into honest curiosity, as it always did when Tony was serious with her. At that, Tony let go, shifting as if to turn away slightly before looking back at her.

It was strange to confide even in Pepper, even now, of his ideas and thoughts running a mile a minute and plans, but he kept telling himself he'd give it an honest effort, and he would.

"It's just a hunch, but I think the two are connected," Tony said, tone a little begrudging despite himself. Doing things based off of _hunches_ was really, really not his style, but his mind flashed back to Hawkeye and the Avengers initiative and "youngest math professor" (where had that come from?) and Howard Stark's notes on a _cube_ and he knew it was more than just a "hunch".

So he plowed on valiantly regardless. "I know, I know. That's not very scientific, but trust me on this one, alright?"

He could tell he was swaying her with that argument, weak as it was, because Pepper _did_ trust him, against all odds, despite Tony himself. Yes, he was a very lucky man, that was for sure. Things like this just reminded him—he'd be more than a little lost without Pepper.

But he still didn't say that there was more than just a hunch guiding him onwards. He didn't say that he knew there would be answers there, he _knew_ it. He trusted Pepper with his life, but there were some things that should, nonetheless, remain secret.

In an attempt at levity, Tony added quickly, "Besides, this _is _me we're talking about here. When have I ever been wrong?"

Pepper opened her mouth—he winced, because honestly, Pepper, it was a joke—and said, "Don't answer that. My point is, I'm definitely onto something here."

Pepper observed him for a moment, having been rather too quiet this entire time, he thought uncomfortably, but then she said, "You're sure?"

He nodded—and she continued, "I'm coming with you then."

Tony froze, his mind already working at a mile a minute. It was just a convention—right?

So why did his heart rate speed up just at the thought of Pepper accompanying him?

If he was honest with himself (something he tended to avoid), Tony knew it was because he knew something was going to happen there, and the thought of losing Pepper was—

Well, his mind shied away from it, to put it lightly. But Pepper's expression was firm, unyielding, and Tony was quickly realizing that in some things, Pepper was just as formidable as the day she had walked out of his office (her office) leaving him to think over his impending death on his own.

Pepper was a force to be reckoned with, and purposefully leaving Pepper out of something she thought concerned her would only come back to bite him. And if, as he suspected, SHIELD would be infiltrating the entire thing, it had to be safe.

It had to be, and he still didn't want her to go, but his traitorous mouth said, "If you aren't busy with a million other things, sure, why not? You'd be better company than half of those wannabe scientists."

For a moment, Tony thought he'd hit on something, with the way Pepper's lips pursed. But then she smiled (and most anything was worth it when she smiled, it really was, sappy as that sounded even in his head) and shook her head.

"I'll clear my schedule—"

"Pepper—" Tony attempted to interrupt, rather unsuccessfully.

"_Tony_," Pepper said over him, closing her eyes for a brief moment to gather herself. When she opened them, her expression was firm. "If this is as important as you think it is, then it's fine."

She nodded, satisfied, at the look on his face and turned to go.

She turned back with the timing of an actor, speaking over her shoulder. "Oh—I wouldn't be a very good biographer if I wasn't there to see what happens."

And then she left, fingers returning to the touchscreen of her tech, already working to revise her schedule.

Tony watched her leave for a moment. And then he shook his head, sigh almost amused.

"What have I done to deserve this?"

His expression was plaintive, but there was gratitude in his tone. And when JARVIS answered primly, "_I don't know, sir_," Tony didn't correct him.

He just let his lips quirk up in some amusement briefly, shaking his head. "Me neither, Jarvis. Me neither."

* * *

The convention was everything Tony had expected it to be when he first discovered it—it was _boring_. It was filled to the brim with mathematicians who thought highly of themselves simply because they could do with math what Tony had been able to do when he'd graduated. He'd been at least twenty years younger than the youngest person here.

Their haughtiness was annoying at worst, but what truly bothered him about people like this was the lack of _imagination_. To them, math was rules and laws. They searched for new ways to define it, new ways to pin it down.

To Tony, math was a tool to create, and a necessary one. In a world of screws, math acted as his screwdriver, but that did not mean it was not malleable, not able to be tweaked. He could always find new ways to bend math to his will, just as he managed to meld all he needed.

Not a single person here had ever thought to create something with math.

What a _waste_.

Tony mingled, vaguely. He honestly didn't have much of an interest in it, and despite his worries and insistence that Pepper stay close to him, she mingled much better than him not far away.

He was even beginning to relax, which was no good at all, because that meant he was letting his guard down. But there was nothing _here_.

Tony couldn't even spy the SHIELD agents he'd been expecting, surreptitiously glancing over the rims of the sunglasses he refused to take off, even in as academic and fancy a place as this.

No SHIELD. No Hawkeye. No clues. No cubes.

That sounded an awful lot like a dead end—but Tony Stark couldn't expect so easily that an educated guess of his could be wrong. It went against everything he knew to be right, and everything he was willing to accept.

Because he wasn't used to being wrong.

Pepper, the dependable, wonderful Pepper, had already sat through two hours of _math_, and complicated math, but she merely smiled serenely at those who came to inquire about her presence and try to stun her with their ever-so-impressive wit. Those sorts of people Pepper didn't need help to fend off. Those sorts of people might need someone to save _them_ from _her_.

Tony wasn't feeling particularly generous, however, so he turned his attention away from Pepper offering the sort of smile that implied she was _really not pleased_ at one of the more haughty gentlemen present just in time to catch a flash of black and purple.

He arched an eyebrow, strolling easily through the crowd, projecting a sense of "don't mess with me" in his stride and expression, enough that he wasn't stopped as he made his way to one of the walls. There, he leaned against the wall, to any first glance utterly relaxed and just judging the milling people before him.

And then Tony slid his sunglasses down the bridge of his nose slightly and looked up as subtly as he could.

He spared a brief thought for how he should have invested in some of those mirror glasses, like the spies had, and maybe Natasha had them—and a slightly longer thought on how he could improve something like that to actual work in situations like this—and then his eyes caught the purple and black he'd noticed before.

Hawkeye cut a decent figure in a suit, Tony noted absently. Black suit, purple tie, but most people didn't hang out in the rafters that Tony was rather certain hadn't existed there the last time he'd made an appearance in this building.

SHIELD had installed a high place just for their very own sharp-eyed hawk.

Interesting.

He shifted his gaze then, examining the rest of the rafters, noting the agents there. There weren't many; those who were there looked to be weaponless. Even more interesting. This was a reconnaissance mission, then.

From just that, Tony could derive that this mission was supposed to be stealthy. It was meant as an observation, so whatever they were observing wasn't all too dangerous.

At least, SHIELD didn't think it was too dangerous, but Tony thought of a hacker sliding through his carefully constructed defenses like a hot knife through butter and found he wasn't quite so certain about that.

But this little math discussion on regular octachorons was important enough for SHIELD to send one of its top agents. That Hawkeye was here said quite a lot as well—

"I don't suppose there are a great many cubes in the ceiling?"

The voice that interrupted Tony's thoughts was smooth and cool, calm as it cut through the chatter of the room without drawing attention to them. It was, in short, the voice of a poised actor, one used to using his voice for a _purpose_, and not just because he had a tongue, like so many people tended to do.

Tony was familiar with using the voice as a tool. He'd been in the spotlight since he was born, and he knew very well how to pitch his voice just right, how to attract an audience, how to draw a crowd.

But as Tony found himself turning automatically to see who it was who had such a clever voice (and, of course, who had found him out, but Tony was very good at wriggling out of tight situations).

He met green eyes, a tall, lithe figure and a sharp flash of teeth that could have been considered a grin. Young, to be at a place like this—that was the first thing Tony noted, after gauging his first reactions to the other's appearance. Sharp suit, no tie, but a green scarf…

Scarf?

That struck some part of Tony's mind, a memory that he thought he should rather remember, and it wasn't just that a scarf was a pretty outlandish thing to wear in California with a full suit at a time like this, and it was clearly just a fashion statement, but it was a pretty damn weird one.

Not that it looked bad on the man. No, Tony had to admit that the rather tall man standing before him did not look bad at all in that suit and scarf combo. In fact, he didn't look like he'd ever looked bad a single day of his life.

In Tony's brief evaluation, anyway.

In the next instant, the man's words were sinking in and Tony allowed the sunglasses to slide down the bridge of his nose again so he could peer at him over the top of them.

It was just for added effect, really.

"No, not really. The math's not all that interesting here. I've heard it all before, anyway, and math doesn't change much. I mean, a square's a square, except when it's a rectangle, and cube's are cubes, even in four dimensions. Not that exciting." Tony took a breath, noting that oddly enough, it didn't look like he'd lost the man in his rambling. Odd. "I was just admiring the architecture. I like what they've done to the place since the last time I was here."

Rafters for spying hawks with bows. That was quite the modern décor statement.

The black-haired man hummed beside him, looking up at the rafters with an almost bored expression.

There was a flicker of his eyes that let Tony know that he'd seen Hawkeye.

The side-eyed glance the other gave Tony a moment later let him know that he _wanted_ him to know that he'd seen the SHIELD agent, and now Tony was curious, even as a chill ran down his spine. He was familiar with the feeling—feeling like his stomach had dropped out from under him and cold water dripped down his spine. It was the feeling of a dangerous situation, possibly even a fatal one, and Tony, as was his habit, dove right in.

"It is not particularly subtle," came the response, but now those green eyes were focused entirely on Tony instead of the rafters. "I am not entirely certain I like it."

It felt like he was gauging Tony, trying to get a read on him. So Tony decided to be as infuriatingly Tony as he could be, shrugging noncommittally. "Sometimes you have to be blunt to make an impact," he said, and it was obvious they weren't talking about what wasn't even truly part of the decoration anymore.

There was that appraising glance again, but this time it was accompanied with a faintly amused smirk.

"No, I don't suppose subtlety always works," came the musing response, the man shifting to hold out his hand. "My name is Luke Eventer. A pleasure, Mr. Tony Stark."

Luke Eventer. That last name sounded French—but Tony had bigger things to worry about than the etymology of Luke's name. He knew his name.

Admittedly, that wasn't unusual at all; it was almost more unusual when someone _didn't_ know Tony Stark's name. But said in such a cool, unemotional way such as that, after that provocation, now that was odd, and Tony wanted to know just what this Luke Eventer was playing at.

(Scarves and chilly words. There was something he wasn't remembering and it was driving him crazy.)

"Do I know you?" Tony asked, rather politely for him, Pepper could be proud, while his mind raced furiously. What was it, what was it—his mind was bringing to the forefront "newspaper", but that was ridiculous, Tony didn't _read_ newspapers.

"No, Mr. Stark, you do not." A flicker of a smirk again, and Luke's eyes left his to scan the gathering of people. "Though I rather imagine that shall change soon."

Tony narrowed his eyes despite himself, because that sounded an awful lot like an order, and he was known to not really be fond of those. If this snobby mathematician thought he could order him around—

(Mathematician. Of course he was a mathematician. He wouldn't be here if he wasn't but for some reason that set off warning bells in his mind.)

And then Luke grinned, a full-on bearing of his teeth, and continued before Tony could say a word, "It's an interesting concept, isn't it? Cubic prisms, octachorons…a tesseract. You ought to collect your lady friend before she finds herself into a spot of trouble."

The change in topic would have given him whiplash if his brain didn't work as quickly as it did. Thankfully, Tony only needed a very brief moment to catch up and make the connection, though that was all the time Luke needed to turn and begin to walk away, posture neat and pace unhurried and unconcerned.

Tony could have gone after him.

_You ought to collect your lady friend_.

Really, it wasn't even a contest. Tony turned abruptly, scanning the remaining people (there were few now, as it was getting rather late) to find the familiar red hair of Pepper. She seemed fine, but he was still quick to stroll over there, interrupting her conversation with a hand on her shoulder and ignoring the look she shot him.

Noting his seriousness quickly, Pepper excused herself from her conversation and turned to face Tony, meeting his eyes, or trying to. It was a difficult task, as Tony's eyes were rather busily darting around the room trying to find Luke, trying to understand where the threat was coming from, and _where had Hawkeye gone_ and to hell with this entire thing—

But he didn't waste any time in beginning to guide her out of the building, shaking his head at her questioning "Tony?".

"It's time for us to go," he said simply, expression tightening. He'd put Pepper into danger again, and what kind of genius was he, this really, really, _really_ hadn't been a good idea. Sure, he hadn't found any sign of a threat yet, but that didn't mean a single thing.

The certainty in Luke's voice was hard to shake off, and the mirth in those green eyes made Tony want to wipe that smug expression clear off his face.

Confused as she was, Pepper didn't protest when Tony near-dragged her out of the building and onto the sidewalk, the billionaire freezing quite suddenly as he looked around the street.

He finally glanced back at her then, expression befuddled. "Where's Happy?"

Pepper took in the look on his face, the plaintive question and their hasty exit and carefully straightened her clothing. "He should be here. We are later than we said we would be, after all. Let me just give him a call—"

She had just pulled out her cellphone when the familiar car pulled up, and Tony rolled his eyes in exasperation that he rarely showed for the people who worked under him (but he really couldn't be blamed for it now, not when it was so _important_, and he felt like something was closing in on them), but he didn't bother to wait for Happy to get out to let them in.

He opened the door, urging Pepper in first. He glanced around quickly, and he almost fancied he caught sight of a smirk and a flash of green and black.

A second look and it was gone, and Tony frowned but got into the car, closing the door with a huff.

"Happy—" he started, but he was never quite given the chance to finish his thought, whether it was a reproach or simply an order to take them home, as the driver turned to look at them and it was _definitely_ not Happy. The grin directed at them told of their new driver's delight in their confusion.

And then he took off, locking the doors with the press of a button and trapping the two of them rather effectively with the simple speed of the car hurtling down the city road, taking no heed of the people driving around them.

Tony exchanged a glance with Pepper, his once-assistant wide-eyed but remarkably calm, and he just breathed out a slow, solemn, "Well shit."


End file.
